I've heard some good things from my family on the East Coast about Truist, so with my daughter going out east to college, I thought it might be a good idea to open a bank account. This would make it easier for me to send her money, and be a great way to make finances easier for her when she travels back for the summer. However, I did have some questions about accounts and the best way to set things up so I decided to call the company before opening anything up.
I wasn't sure what to expect, as I know that they offer a lot of banking products such as checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, credit cards, loans, etc. Therefore, there are a lot of reasons why people might end up on the phone with them. Plus, there are many people who probably need help with lost or stolen cards or identity theft issues since those always run right along with banking issues. With that in mind, if I ended up on hold for a while I would have understood, but I was pleasantly surprised. The hold line wasn't that bad, but the phone directory was repetitive and took some time to get through.
When I first called this number, I was greeted by a voice assistant who said, "Thank you for calling Truist. This call may be monitored, recorded, and shared for quality, monitoring, and compliance purposes," and then gave out a long list of options including, "If you are calling about a checking, savings, money market, CD, or IRA account, press 1. If you are calling about a debit or ATM card, press 2. For a credit card, press 3. For a loan or line of credit, press 4. For online or mobile banking, press 5. To open a new account, press 6. If you are not a Truist client, press 7."
I pressed 6, and then it said, "Okay, let me look up your account. What is your social security number or Tax ID number?" This made no sense to me since it wouldn't be able to find me, but I entered a number just to make it happy and it said, "If you are a Truist client, press 1. If not, press 2." I already selected I wanted to open a new account so this seemed silly, but I once again chose that I wasn't a client and it gave me more options including, "For a new account or questions about rates, press 1. For a third-party loan payoff, press 2. For the status of a loan application, press 3. For the status of a credit card application, press 4. For the status of a payoff loan, press 5."
I once again selected that I wanted to learn more about a new account, and it gave me a new list but it went so fast I missed the options. This worked out in my favor because it repeated the options in a shortened format stating, "For a personal account, press 1. For a business account, press 2." This time I pressed 1 and finally, I was told to wait on hold for the next teammate. Luckily it only took a few minutes from this point on to talk to someone and they were helpful.